


Of Hopes and Fears and Twilight Fantasies

by imachar



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Light Angst, M/M, Polyamory, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Threesome - M/M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-01-10
Updated: 2015-06-11
Packaged: 2018-01-08 04:36:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 19,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1128435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imachar/pseuds/imachar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jim is a little surprised to find that Chris and Bones are flirting around the edges of a real relationship – he’s even more surprised to find that they want him to join them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part I

 

Coming in this late at night Jim doesn't expect anyone to be waiting for him at the Roswell/North Atlanta shuttle port, but when the door of the arrival lounge slides open he can’t contain his grin at the sight of Bones, looking grumpy and put-out at the late hour, his fingers tapping impatiently on the back of Chris’s anti-grav chair.

“Hey, you guys didn’t have to come for me, I could’ve taken a ground car.” Jim drops his duffle and steps into a welcoming hug, wanting nothing more than to lean into Bones’ warm, powerful body and bask in the familiarity and comfort of finally being home. He’s surprised when a strong hand curls into the short hair at his nape and tugs gently, forcing his head up until he’s looking into Bones’ face, the expression sharp and snarky even if the hazel eyes are soft and fond.

“Don’t be a fucking dumbass, of course we were going to come and get you.”

And then he’s pulled into a kiss that makes his toes curl and his heart stutter with needy gratitude – he hasn’t been kissed in entirely too fucking long. He shivers, fingers gripping tightly into the heavy cotton of Bones’ jacket and feels his breath hitch in his chest as an agile tongue swipes a tease across his lower lip.

When he comes out of it and turns his attention to Chris he catches only the briefest glimpse of an amused, tolerant smile before he’s skewered with that familiar, insightful look. “I heard you performed above and beyond.” The voice is a little weary, rougher and deeper than usual, and Jim makes a conscious effort not to show concern, he remembers just how much that pisses Chris off.

“Yeah? Good to know, Captain One isn’t exactly effusive with her praise.” Jim leans down for a brief, affectionate hug, lingering for a moment as Chris whispers, “Proud of you, kid.” His heart tripping slightly at the praise and the proximity; conflicted as always by the confusing mix of affection, respect and desire that’s he’s felt for this man since their first meeting.

The confusion deepens as he bends to retrieve the duffle and catches a glimpse of a thumb rubbing across the nape of Chris’s neck as Bones rests his hands back on the anti-grav chair. It’s a gesture that speaks of a familiarity much greater than mere friendly affection and Jim pauses as he straightens up, reminded of all the comm traffic the three of them have shared over the last few months. Late night, rambling conversations where fatigue and frustration and the occasional shot or four of bourbon had lowered everyone’s defenses and Jim, more perceptive than most, had caught hints of a deep intimacy developing between his friends.

He’s not entirely surprised, knowing both of them as well as he does, and knowing exactly why they’ve been thrown together for almost half a year.

Less than a month after Jim had shipped out as XO of the Yorktown Chris – his recovery stalled shy of him actually walking again – had been transferred to the Shepherd Spinal Center in Atlanta for advanced neural implant therapy, and Bones had gone with him. The official line had been that Bones was on loan to both the SSC and Emory while they were all waiting for the Enterprise’s refit to be completed, farmed out to train a new generation of neurosurgeons in his neural grafting technique; one of Starfleet’s many good will gestures in the wake of the Harrison incident. Unofficially, however, Jim knows that the real reason for Bones’ extended sojourn in Atlanta has been to spend some quality time with Joanna before he leaves on a five-year deep space mission and, more critically, to take care of Chris; Boyce and Bones conspiring to ensure that Chris’s mental health wasn’t neglected while he recovered his mobility with the newly integrated neural implants.

That was five months ago and, as he watches the subtle interplay between the two of them, Bones’ thumb still stroking through the short gray hair at Chris’s nape, the restrained display of gentle affection leaves him wondering at the status of the friends-with-benefits deal that he and Bones have shared since the second year of the Academy; and more specifically what the fuck that kiss was about.

He frowns briefly and Bones raises an eyebrow in that singular way that he has. “What?” There’s no hint in the clear, slightly tired, gaze that there is anything amiss and Jim shrugs, this isn’t the time or the place.

“Nothin’ man, just good to be home.” He tilts his head and smiles again; they can deal with whatever is going on later, right now he’s content to be on solid ground for a while. “Just happy you guys are okay.”

He’s not sure how true that last part is, both Chris and Bones are smiling, looking happy to see him, but if he looks closely he can see the understated tension in both of them, the dark circles under Bones’ eyes and the tight lines around Chris’s mouth and his heart sinks at the proof of how hard the last few months have been for them. Bones frowns again and Jim makes a conscious effort to smile, realizing that he’s telegraphing too much of his concern. He hoists the duffle onto his shoulder and smacks Bones’ lightly on the arm. “Come on, I need a comfortable chair and a shot of Kentucky’s best.”

The house is in Decatur, a small 22nd century arts and crafts revival bungalow with a wide front porch that’s shaded by a couple of neatly trimmed crepe myrtles and a huge old magnolia tree. Jim knows they chose it because it’s close to both Emory and the Shepherd Center and right around the corner from Joanna’s middle school, but it’s a good forty minutes from the shuttle port even in a Starfleet expedited ground car and by the time they make it through the front door Chris is clearly exhausted. Bones pats Jim on the back and points him in the direction of a door towards the back left of the central hallway. “Go dump your stuff in there.” And then he gestures to an open French door. “I’ll meet you in the kitchen in a minute.”

“Yeah…” Despite the weariness there’s amused sarcasm in Chris’s voice as he pushes himself out of the chair, “…I’m up way past my bed-time.” He takes a step toward Jim. “Time to say goodnight.” And Jim meets him halfway, leaning into the full-bodied hug, gratified at the wiry strength in Chris’s arms and torso, and slightly distracted by rasp of chest hair under the thin t-shirt and the familiar bite of sandalwood aftershave layered over clean laundry and something that is uniquely Chris. When he lets go there’s a look in Chris’s eyes that Jim can’t quite interpret; a look that might just be longing threaded through with faintly predatory desire and for a moment Jim thinks his head’s going to explode. Clearly there is something going on here that he’s not privy to and it’s fucking with his mind in a way that’s both disconcerting and just a little thrilling.

But before he can question it, Bones pushes open the door to a bedroom at the front of the house and ushers Chris towards it. “I’ll just be a minute.” And Chris rolls his eyes at Jim. “Fucking meds…” Leaving Jim just a little unsure whether he’s talking about the medication or the medic.

Dumping his duffle in the assigned bedroom, Jim takes only a moment to avail himself of the head before he makes his way to the kitchen and occupies himself searching the cabinets until he finds the liquor stash. He’s just cracked the top on a fresh bottle of Woodford when Bones walks in, stretching both arms over his head in a way that suggests he’s both tired and sore, and revealing just enough of his abdomen that Jim’s pulse takes a leap at the sight of the narrow line of dark hair heading south into his jeans. He takes a long pause, trying not to think about sex, because he’s sensing that things are a lot more complicated than they used to be. As disappointed as he would be – disappointed isn’t even close to the real emotion, but it’s as much as he’ll allow himself – if their friends-with-benefits arrangement has run its course, he’s not about to interfere in anything Chris and Bones might have going.

He loves both of them far too much for that.

So he deflects.

“How has he been?”

Bones leans against the kitchen island and rolls his shoulders. “Physically? He’s strong and he’s really mastered the implants. The only reason I had him use the chair tonight was that they delayed your fucking flight four times.”

Jim shrugs and runs his free hand through his hair in frustration. “Yeah, they were holding it for me and I could _not_ get out of Komack’s office. One was still there when I escaped and she just commed right when I got off the flight to say she was finally out.”

“I know, sorry.” Bones retrieves a couple of chunky glasses from the cabinet by the sink and drops ice into each of them before he nods at Jim to hand over the Woodford. As he pours he continues, “So yeah, physically he’s doing great, meds are down to maintenance doses and he can make a circuit of the rehab track without any real trouble. But the rest is pretty fuckin’ tough.”

“The PTSD?” Jim takes the offered glass and touches it briefly to Bones’ and then they both pause to take a moment to savor the first sip of cool, honey-sweet, smoky bourbon.

After a moment Bones lays his glass aside and sighs. “Yep, it’s a bastard. Gotta say though, he’s pretty damn cheerful for as bad as it is.”

Jim winces, and gestures for Bones to tell him more, frustrated when all he gets in response is a shrug and a vague. “You’re here for three weeks darlin’…believe me, you’ll see just how bad.”

Bones takes another long sip of the bourbon and Jim can see the tension drain out of him as he leans back against the counter again and, as hard as it is, he contains his own impatience, his desire to ask Bones just what the fuck is going on and what does it mean for them, for Chris, for the future of the command team that the three of them are supposed to become when they re-launch the Enterprise in four months time.

After a moment Bones fills the silence with a question. “So how was it? Working with One?”

“Great, seriously if I couldn’t have Chris as a captain, she’s like the next best choice.” Jim smiles, wide and genuine, he really had loved working with One, coming to appreciate how important it was to have a command team that embraced different styles and personalities.

“Yeah?” There’s an unexpected edge of sarcasm to Bones’ voice and Jim is stung as his best friend goes on. “Just as well, no-one else would’ve taken you.”

“Hey man, that’s a little rough.” Anger sharpening his tone, Jim backs up and eyes Bones carefully, taking in the smear of stubble on his jaw where he’d shaved too fast, and the barely perceptible tremor in those normally steady hands. He tilts his head, watching warily as Bones flinches in self-contempt, guilty regret saturating his apology.

“Dammit, I didn’t mean that.” He drains the last of the Woodford in his glass and as he reaches for the bottle, Jim stays his hand; an excess of alcohol is probably the last thing either of them needs tonight.

“Yeah, just your inner grumpy bastard showing through.” Forgiving as always, Jim’s smile is wry and cheeky and sincere enough to take the sting out of his words and he’s gratified when Bones relaxes and steps close to rub a hand across his chest.

“Ignore the miserable fucker in the room, I’m just tired and frustrated as all fuck.”

Ignoring Bones is proving to be a little tricky now that he’s got a hand resting flat against the thin fabric of Jim’s undershirt. Warm and strong, Jim knows the feel of that hand, knows what it can do to his cock, what it feels like on his skin; knows the feel of the fingers deft and agile as they open him, as they slide deep and make him see stars. And his blood quickens at the thought, a sweet flash of heat thrumming through his body, reminding him that it’s been entirely too long since there’s been sex in his life.

“It’s okay, Bones, it’s okay. Maybe it’ll be a quiet night.” Jim’s walking a fine line, reluctant to outright offer sex as stress-relief just in case things between them have changed beyond all recognition, but trying to make sure that Bones knows that the option is there if he wants it. He shifts his weight, his thigh pressing lightly against the jean-clad hip that’s resting against the kitchen counter and he feels the slow bleed of tension as Bones leans into him.

“Yeah, maybe it will.” With his head tilted, eyes gone to soft, green-bronze, Bones relaxes a little further and when he smiles, sly and a little seductive, the atmosphere shifts and Jim takes a hard breath, skewered with need as Bones asks. “So you ready to break that dry-spell?”

“You have no idea…” There’s still a nagging doubt at the back of his mind that they shouldn’t be doing this, at least not without a long conversation first, but he wills it away; the prospect of sex is too seductive, the lure of tangling himself up in Bones; all strong firm heat, long limbs and smooth skin and that whisky-dark voice whispering filthy, sexy, sweet promises until they’re both lost in the sweat-drenched bliss of orgasm.

The edge of desperation in the first kiss takes Jim by surprise, usually they ease into things, especially after a long separation, but it’s clear that Bones needs this just as much as he does and the niggling little voice in his head reasserts itself. He needs to know what’s going on with Chris before they do this, while he doesn’t think Bones would fuck around with either of them, he needs to at least try to have the conversation. It’s almost physically painful disengage from the kiss, and as he does it – holding Bones gently but firmly by the nape of the neck – Jim realizes in a sudden moment of clarity just how much he’s matured in the last year; putting the breaks on sex with a more than willing partner isn’t something he’d have had the fortitude to do a year ago.

“I don’t even know how to ask this, but are you and Chris…” Jim’s voice tails off as he wonders exactly how to phrase the next part of the question, but he keeps his hand firmly on the back of Bones’ neck, holding his gaze and waiting for some kind of clarification.

Bones just sighs and closes his eyes for a long moment before he shrugs and admits. “I’m not a hundred percent sure what we are. But I am sure this…” he leans into Jim, and the firm ridge in his jeans is reassurance enough that however complicated this might be Bones still wants him, “…is okay.” He slides a hand under Jim’s t-shirt, stroking through the soft hair on his belly. “I promise, it’s okay.” His fingers tease lower as his voice goes soft and thick with emotion. “Trust me, it’s gonna be fine.”

Jim hesitates a moment longer, his cock thrumming at the tease of Bones’ fingers only centimeters away from the touch he’s craving, searching the green-bronze eyes for any signs of hesitation, knowing all the while he won’t find any. For four years he’s trusted Bones with his life, with his triumphs and failures, his faults and flaws his vices and his virtues, and that trust has never once been in question. If Bones is asking him to trust him now, to lay not only their friendship, but also Jim’s critical and profoundly complex relationship with Chris in his hands, then he has no reason to hesitate. He would trust Bones with his soul itself, and _oh Christ_ does that mean he’s so fucked if this doesn’t work out.

They fall into bed, shedding clothes as they go and when they’re naked and fused together, all fierce heat and fast, hard fucking it takes no time at all for Jim to come, Bones pinned beneath him begging and whimpering for harder, faster, deeper, _now_.

****

Jim wakes with a start and for a moment he thinks he’s still on the Yorktown, but the bed is too wide and the sheets smell of Bones and sex and for a long moment he indulges in a lazy stretch, until he becomes aware that the bed might smell like Bones, but the man himself is missing. Staring at the ceiling for a long moment Jim wonders if he should go in search of him until a whisper of sound attracts his attention and he rolls out of bed to follow it down the corridor to the half open door at the front of the house.

Chris’s room isn’t as dark as Jim expects, two nightlights illuminating the space, one next to the bed, the other on the dresser and he’s briefly distracted by the fact that there’s a familiar sock – one of a pair that Win got Bones for Christmas last year – hanging out of one of the drawers. Now Jim understands why the room he just left looked a little too spartan, and tidy, to be one that Bones occupies on a regular basis.

“Hey?” He pitches his voice low and quiet, fighting the unexpected unease at the sight of Chris curled tight in Bones’ arms. “Is he okay?” and he’s surprised at how much it hurts to see Chris this vulnerable. He’s shivering slightly, his head tucked under Bones’ chin and Jim winces as Bones strokes his fingers gently through Chris’s hair.

Bones just rolls his eyes, not even bothering to vocalize the _of course he’s not okay, dumbass_ before he lifts a hand and beckons Jim to join them on the bed. “Come here, protect his back.”

Jim lifts the comforter, frowning at Bones, trust stretched to the limit as he sits on the mattress and rubs a hand gently across Chris’s shoulders, troubled by the barely perceptible tremors rippling through the too-thin frame.

“Is he awake?” Jim keeps his voice low as he eases himself down onto the sheets.

“No, he doesn't usually wake unless it’s really bad. I just need you to…” Bones reaches out for Jim’s hand and rests it on Chris’s hip. “…come here and slide in behind him. Contact really makes him feel safe.”

Jim does as he’s bidden, reassured by the sweet, grateful smile he gets from Bones, and by the way Chris unconsciously molds himself back against Jim’s body, fitting into the curves and hollows of his frame.

“Like this?” He mouths the words, not even whispering and gets a brief nod in response. “Just like that, see it’s working already…” And Bones lays his hand over Jim’s, curling their fingers together and pressing the joined hands to Chris’s chest as the shudders diminish just a fraction.

****

When he next wakes, there’s light, soft and gray filtering through the window on the other side of the room and Jim takes a moment to realize that he’s in yet another unfamiliar bed, this one large and disordered, although not from sex. Still tired from a night of sleep cut short, he pulls a pillow more comfortably under his head he’s just about to tuck the comforter up under his chin, intending to go back to sleep for a while when the unmistakable sound of raised voices makes him go still. He can’t hear any details, but he knows both voices well enough to have no doubt that Chris and Bones are fighting about something, although it seems that Chris is the one doing most of the yelling. Uncharacteristically hesitant to intervene, Jim curls back into the warmth and tries to ignore the slightly sick feeling in his stomach until the voices fade and he finally hears the front door slam as one of the antagonists leaves for the day.

He’s still wrapped in the comforter when the door slides open and the enticing smell of coffee heralds Bones’ entry.

“Hey, you awake?” Bones sounds remarkably cheerful for someone who has just been in a door-slamming argument and Jim scrambles out from under the covers to find the coffee mug on the night stand and Bones about to sit down on the edge of the mattress.

“Yeah, I’m awake.” Jim pauses to appreciate a morning-ruffled, shirtless Bones while he takes an appreciative sip of his scalding coffee before he frowns. “That didn’t sound good.”

“What? Chris yelling? Don’t think too much on it, he gets a little fractious when he’s got a full day of physio ahead of him.” Bones takes a sip of his own coffee and casts a cheeky look of appraisal at Jim’s naked chest. “You want to move over so I can come back to bed I’m not on till noon.”

“Bones, he sounded pretty damn pissed.” Confused at Bones’ nonchalant attitude to the fight Jim nonetheless does as he’s told and makes room in the bed, rewarded by the sight of Bones wriggling out of his sleep pants before he joins Jim under the under the comforter.

“Yeah, he was, but it’s not serious.” His coffee laid safely on the nightstand Bones rests a hand on Jim’s chest and gives him a reassuring stroke. “You think he’s pissed because he figured out we fucked?”

Confining himself to a brief nod, still confused as hell about what’s going on Jim concentrates on his coffee and listens as Bones explains, in a voice devoid of his usual sarcastic edge. “Jim, I told you to trust me. It really is okay, Chris doesn’t have a problem with us having sex, he has a problem with us not inviting him to join us.”

“You what?” Jim almost stutters as he tries to get his head around what Bones has just said.

“Sorry darlin’, we should have talked about this _before_ we fucked last night.”

Bones sounds a little chagrined at his own lack of transparency and Jim shakes his head, fingers stroking across the sparse dark hair on Bones’ chest, relishing the warmth of him and the feel of his skin, velvet smooth beneath his fingertips. “Hey, it’s okay man – I just wasn’t expecting _that_ ”

Bones frowns, “Really? You had no idea that Chris might be interested in you?”

“No, I guess I just assumed that he couldn’t...” There’s a pause as Jim hesitates to voice his next thought, “…y’know…that he can’t…”

And Bones laughs, a little ruefully. “Yeah, well, he can’t – but that doesn't mean he’s not interested in sex. We’re not fucking, but we’re sure as hell having sex.”

Jim’s not nearly so crass or inexperienced to require a play by play of how and why sex and fucking are two different things but he’s still completely confused as to where he fits into the puzzle. “Okay so you’re _not_ fucking Chris, but you _are_ having sex with him, and you’re also fucking me, and he’s okay with that.”

“Like I said, he’ll be more okay with it if he gets to watch, or play along as far as he’s able.” Fingers teasing across Jim’s chest, Bones is doing a fine job of side-tracking the conversation, but Jim is determined to finish it.

“So Chris shares? Why did I not expect that?”

“No idea. Some half-assed misconception about what age and rank and all that natural authority do to someone’s personality I guess. But you are _so_ wrong about Chris, he’s very happy to share so long as its you, and so long as he gets to play too.” A clever finger rubs across the taut rise of one nipple and Jim bites back a little whine of need as his cock makes its presence felt.

“You’ve talked about it?”

Bones chuckles now, a real genuine _from-the-heart_ laugh that more than anything else reassures Jim that things are going to be just fine. “Talked about it? You have no fucking idea how many times we’ve talked about it. How many times he’s told me in exquisite detail what he’d like to watch us do to each other; how many times he’s made me come, jerking me off while he whispers all the filthy orders he wants to give you.”

His eyes bright and happy, Bones leans in and replaces his teasing finger with an agile tongue, flicking wet and hot over Jim’s flesh even as Jim tries to wrap his head around the thought of Chris talking dirty. He’s spent four years listening to that voice – deep and rich and extraordinarily sexy – praising and scolding, encouraging and outright seething with anger, depending on the moment; the thought of it whispering soft, indecent, commands is enough to make shivers track up and down Jim’s spine and send the blood spiraling to his groin.

“You better not be fucking with me.”

“I wouldn’t do that to you, darlin’.” Bones is still grinning and he tilts his head to press a brief kiss to Jim’s shoulder. “Why’d you think we got this bed, it’s meant for three not two.”

Jim thinks about that for a moment, all the possibilities inherent in having Bones and Chris in the same bed and then he grins, slow and teasingly filthy. “So how do we do this?”

Bones grins and shrugs nonchalantly. “Well, he’s got physiotherapy until seventeen hundred and then he’s going to come home sore and tired and in desperate need of a hot bath and a massage. We could probably start from there and see what happens.”

_fin_


	2. Part II

After six months under the command of Captain One, self-confidence isn't really a problem for Jim Kirk; real self-confidence, not the paper-façade of cocky farm-boy bullshit that he's relied on for most of his life. A master at giving him enough rope to hang himself and then rewarding him with her sly, not-quite-there, smirk when he pulled off whatever long-shot mission he'd been charged with, One had run him ragged during their six-month tour of the three precarious sectors where Romulan, Klingon and Federation space intersected. In one of the few places within Federation space where Starfleet operated in a reality that balanced commanders and their crews on a knife-edge of continual stress and tension Jim had thrived in the high-pressure environment and, as the tour was winding up, One had rewarded him with an illicit copy of the performance evaluation that she had sent to Nogura. Jim knows he's good and, endorsed by someone other than Pike, he knows that the rest of Command now knows it too. 

But that's work, this is personal, and so he frets for much of the afternoon after Bones finally leaves for his shift. For all Bones' insouciance about Chris's foul mood when he left this morning, Jim has ugly memories of the raised voices and slamming doors that had provided the soundtrack to an adolescence scarred by family discord. Memories of Sam and Frank screaming at each other and Jim burying himself under the bedcovers as the old Iowa farmhouse echoed with the caustic fury of teenage rebellion and intransigent authority. Fifteen years later his gut twists as he recalls that late summer afternoon when Sam had finally had enough, still faintly nauseated at the recollection of his beloved older brother walking away, abandoning him to the not-so-gentle mercies of Uncle Frank. 

In the end Sam's rebellion hadn't lasted long, Win had cut short her two year tour on the Finisterre when she realized how badly her half-brother had fucked up his responsibilities to her and her boys and Sam had come home as soon as Frank left the house. But by then Jim had been closed-off and resentful, his relationship with Sam damaged to the point that it was only now beginning to recover; the collective family trauma inflicted in the wake of the Narada and Harrison incidents causing both of them to reevaluate their fifteen-year cold war. 

Unsettled and melancholy, Jim abandons his half-eaten lunch to the recycler and settles for distracting himself with his backlog of unread comm messages. Two and a half hours into his self-imposed purgatory he's given up on the padd and is nursing a liter mug of iced sweet tea as he sits on one of the cedar Adirondack chairs on the back porch – tapping his feet against the porch rail in a tattoo that's irritating even to him – when the communicator he's stashed in his back pocket vibrates twice and he almost falls out of the chair in his haste to extract it from his jeans. 

It's Chris; the message succinct and oddly comforting, even as it ratchets up his libido in a way that Chris, and only Chris, can accomplish.

[Stop stewing – I'll be home around 17:00 – I expect you clean, shaved and half-naked.]

Jim drops his head back onto the wood of the chair and groans, his cock suddenly uncomfortably constricted by his jeans and, after a slightly masochistic moment of pleasure at the discomfort, wriggles until it's no longer pressing on the zipper as he tries to decipher Chris's message. Clean and half-naked are pretty self-explanatory, it's the reference to shaving that needs either further clarification or, at the very least, more detailed instructions and Jim opens his comm, hoping that Bones isn't engaged in anything too critical for a few minutes.

"Text comm; recipient Bones." And Jim pauses for a moment to frame his question before he asks, [So...what does Chris mean when he says "shaved"?] and then hits send.

Jim fidgets until the response comes through.

[Probably better to talk. Give me a minute to get to my office and I'll call you.]

Draining the last of the iced-tea as he waits Jim distracts himself by watching a cardinal chase some squirrels off the bird feeder that's hanging from the magnolia in the middle of the lawn. He's just about to throw the bird a peanut for its effective squirrel-enforcement, when his comm vibrates again and he flips it open. 

Voice sharp with his habitually harassed tone, Bones eschews any pleasantries for an immediate answer to Jim's question. 

"Stubble is a sensory trigger for Chris. I could tell you why, but that's something he really needs to tell you himself. Anyway, we discovered the hard way that anything other than baby-butt smooth skin against his face will set off a really bad flash-back."

"Okay, so more than a regular shave?" 

The thought of setting off one of Chris's flashbacks is almost terrifying enough for Jim to think about calling the whole thing off and just as he's about to voice that thought Bones demonstrates once again that he knows Jim entirely too well. "Don't even think about backing out of this, Jim. When I ran into Chris an hour ago he was in a better mood than I've seen him in days."

"I won't, just tell me what I need to do so it doesn't all blow up in my face."

"Shave really well. If there's even a remote possibility that we're going to fool around I go with a level four laser shave and a layer of beard repressor so nothing even begins to grow back for twenty-four hours." The sound fades out a little on the last half of the sentence as Bones responds to something in his office, but unequivocal instructions on exactly how much shaving is required is all the reassurance Jim needs.

"Sure, I can do that."

"Damn straight you can. You'll be fine kid, you both will." Bones' voice trails off again a little as he apparently has to turn away from the comm and then he comes back. "Sorry, I've got a meeting with the neurosurgical group that's down from Ottawa, I need to go."

Reassured, and conscious that Bones is needed elsewhere, Jim is about to sign off when he throws out one last question. "Hey man, so I just need to shave my face?"

There's a slightly dirty chuckle from the other end of the comm-link before Bones pulls himself together. "Yeah, that should do for tonight. You wouldn't want to get too ambitious, either of you."

"Is there anything else I should know?"

A weary sigh filters across the ether, "A shit-ton, but it's not for me to tell you; you need to have this conversation with Chris." 

"You know I hate talking about that shit."

"Sorry darlin', there's no getting round this one. Don't worry; he'll be gentle with you. Now, I gotta go."

***********

 

The rest of the afternoon passes a little too quickly for Jim. He spends half of it in the bathroom showering and then making three painstakingly careful passes across his face and neck with the laser-shaver, smoothing on a generous layer of beard repressor for good measure and when he's done he thinks his cheeks haven't been this smooth since he was nine. He hopes to hell that it's good enough, because the thought of trying to deal with Chris's PTSD without Bones around is almost terrifying enough to make him rethink the whole sex and intimacy thing.

Dressed in a pair of Bones' old flannel sleep pants, that ride far too low on his hips for decency, Jim occupies a few more hours methodically demolishing the record high score on the entertainment system's version of Galactic Battleground XIV. He smirks, entirely too pleased with himself, as he zips past the high scores of both emorydoc and – albeit a good two hours into the game – mojavecaptain: fascinating, Jim thinks, that even after two years Admiral Pike still thinks of himself as a captain. 

Oblivious to the gathering twilight beyond the living room windows Jim's immersed in the systematic annihilation of the insectoid antagonists' hive planet when his comm finally signals that Chris is on his way home. A bare few minutes later he shuts off the screen, stuffs the control padd back behind the couch cushions – not that he really thinks either of the other two are not going to notice that spacestud blew their existing high scores into orbit – and then is briefly paralyzed at the sound of a vehicle pulling up in front of the house. Unsure whether he should stay where he is or go open the door for Chris, torn between appearing indifferent or over-solicitous, he settles for emerging into the hallway as he hears the front door click open; eager enough to come to greet Chris without being presumptuous enough to open his own front door for him. 

Jim opens the door to find Chris turned away, his hand raised to dismiss the Starfleet ground car that has brought him home and for one unguarded moment he can see the exhaustion written in every line of Chris's too-thin frame. But even as Jim winces at the thought of all the pain and effort that is going into these long months of recovery the hand drops and Chris turns, slowly enough that there is just time for Jim to bury his concern under his best laid-back smile. 

For all his apparent weariness Chris is grinning when he finally shuts the front door, his smile wry and slightly mischievous, one eyebrow quirked as he tilts his head and Jim finds himself on the receiving end of a long, assessing look. "Nice work interpreting my request for half-naked." 

The long, slow gaze sends a swift shiver of heat up Jim's body, and his cock twitches briefly as he feels the flush of self-conscious lust washing over his chest and throat. Chris smirks knowingly and, before Jim can recover his wits and come up with a suitably smart-assed response, Chris holds up a take-out container, the neon-pink logo of the neighborhood Mintakan sushi joint emblazoned across the degradable-polymer film bag. Nervousness abated just slightly, Jim grins at the comforting thought that Chris knows his favorite take-out food.

"You want to put this in stasis for a while? I need a bath before I eat."

Stepping forward Jim takes the bag, "Sure; you okay?"

“Tired, a little stiff, and sick to fucking death of being touched by strangers." He steps close and Jim is suddenly very aware of the fractional difference in their heights as Chris reaches up to brush the back of his fingers lightly across his cheek. Chris smiles, eyes bright, as his weariness seems to lift. "You want to fix my shitty day?"

For a moment Jim has no breath to answer, heart hammering at Chris's proximity; at the heat of him through the thin sweatshirt; at the smell of him, faint traces of the morning's shower under a day's worth of exertion and this whole bizarre scenario is suddenly very real. 

For four years he's refused to acknowledge that his attraction to Chris is anything more than a bad case of hero-worship sheathed in a skin of superficial lust, but in this moment what he feels for Chris – what he wants from him – is no less real than what he has with Bones. Up close he can see the affection in Chris's eyes, the way the lines at the corners crease slightly as he smiles, the way his pupils darken with reciprocal desire and then Jim has to take a breath, fast and sharp as Chris's fingers slide around the nape of his neck and exert just the slightest pressure. 

The kiss is brief, just a tease, and almost sweet enough to be chaste but for the sharp nip of teeth that skate across Jim's lower lip and he shudders, the sudden rush of need almost enough to take him to his knees. He wants more, wants it now, wants to taste Chris, to strip him bare and feel the long lines and sharp planes of his body; to worship his cock until it's hard and full and ready to split him in two... 

...With another sharp breath Jim comes to his senses, whatever else is going to happen tonight, getting fucked by Chris isn't on the cards and he steps back just a fraction, frowning, reminded that this isn't one of his uncomplicated friends-with-benefits fucks. Out of his depth, frustrated at his own inability to understand how he's going to reconcile his habitual need to have everything now with the very real constraints on what they'll actually be able to do, he takes another swift hard breath and tries to get his racing pulse under control. 

Patient, Chris waits, his thumb still rubbing a distracting path up and down the nape of Jim's neck and Jim lets himself grow still in the moment, inhaling two deep breaths to steady his heart-rate and clear his head and then he reaches to curl his hand around Chris's forearm, to let himself feel the wiry strength and steady pulse under his fingers, squeezing a reassurance that he's fine even as he asks, "What do you need me to do?"

"Put this in the kitchen." Chris slides his hand away, its weight a comfort on Jim's shoulder as he holds up the container of sushi again with his free hand and Jim tries not to wince at the way the bag sways slightly as his raised arm trembles under the weight. 

Jim takes the food. "And then what?"

"Then I need you to run a bath as hot as you think I can stand and add some of the muscle relaxant that's in the blue bottle by the cabinet. I'm going to go find something more comfortable to wear after I get done."

*********

 

Jim is sitting on the edge of the generously apportioned soaking tub, testing the water, when Chris finally appears, dressed in nothing but a bathrobe that has definitely seen better days. Still slow, one leg dragging a little, his body awkward and stiff as he tries to minimize the limp, Chris makes his way over to the bath and rubs a hand gently through Jim's hair. "Thanks, fifteen minutes with this stuff..." he picks up the bottle of muscle relaxant and adds just a little more to the water, Jim watching carefully as it turns the deep-cobalt blue of the Pacific in summer, "...and I'll be hell of a lot more spry." 

And then he shrugs the bathrobe onto the floor. 

For a second or two Jim just stares. His entire first semester at the Academy the start of Jim's Basic Close Quarters Combat class had coincided with the end of Chris's weekly combat-training sessions, and every week he'd been ridiculously distracted by the presence of Captain-Pike-in-nothing-but-a-towel in the combat center locker rooms. And in the years that followed, he'd never been exactly uninterested whenever a half-dressed Chris had passed him by in the combat center locker rooms. 

Those occasional glimpses of toned muscle and defined abs had fueled more than one late-night fantasy; thoughts of Chris slamming him into the tile wall of the locker room showers, fucking him hard and fast, heedless of the risk of being caught. And his cock flexes hard as he recalls one late afternoon meeting when Chris had been chewing him out for mouthing off to an instructor again and all Jim could focus on was the growl in his voice and the way the muscles of his shoulders and chest flexed as he repeatedly slapped the surface of his desk to emphasize his words. 

Still, stark naked is something entirely new, and Jim is more than a little surprised at the visceral shock of arousal that pierces sharp and fierce through his body at the sight of long, lean muscle and generously furred torso. Too thin and lacking the muscle mass and definition that he'd possessed back at the Academy, a naked Chris is still one of the sexiest things Jim has ever seen, and it takes a real effort of will to contain the urge to lean in and lick his way down the convex curve of the softly furred belly; to feel the teasing brush of body hair against his face; and let his hands wander all over that expanse of warm, firm flesh.

"Hey, Earth to Jim...you okay there?" Chris flicks his fingers and Jim starts, looking up to find Chris laughing at him, his eyes warm with good-natured fondness. 

"Just appreciating the view." Jim reaches out and scratches his nails lightly through the soft hair on Chris's belly. "Never thought I'd get to see this, let alone be allowed to touch." 

"Stop fucking bullshitting me." There's a undertone of self-deprecation in Chris's voice as if he can't quite believe Jim's unashamed appreciation, but he's still laughing as he deflects the wandering hand from its path down below his navel. "Time for that later. Right now I need to lie down before I fall over."

Jim flushes, hoping the heat of the steam rising from the tub disguises his embarrassment. He's spent a lifetime cultivating a facade of emotional disinterest in his sexual partners; always willing to pursue, but not too eagerly; always conscious of his need to guard his feelings even as he indulged his body. Only Bones has ever been on the receiving end of this kind of rapt enthusiasm for another person, and he deflects his discomfort with practiced ease. 

"Bath is ready for you. The water is hot as I can stand, you can test it."

Chris steps over the lip and doesn't quite manage to suppress a wince at the heat, sucking in his breath and letting it out slowly as he gingerly sets his other foot into the water. "It's fine, it needs to be hot to work. I just need to lie here for a little while to let the muscle relaxant work its magic and then I'll be able to forget about all the different forms of hell the PT team put me through today."

"You need me to do anything?" Jim shifts on the edge of the tub, trying not to pay too close attention to the expanse of naked flesh on display, resolutely keeping his eyes fixed on the upper half of Chris's body. 

It's stupid, he knows he's allowed to look, and it's not like Chris is being overly modest, stretching for a moment, arms and shoulders back, pelvis tilted forward until his body forms a long, clean arc, his cock hanging soft and thick between his legs. Holding the stretch for a beat longer than necessary Chris lets out a soft groan, the sound teasing Jim with the hint of pleasure to come; the rough, low growl thick with the promise of sex, and a quick glance at Chris's face, at the sly half-smile curling his lip, and Jim knows Chris is playing with him. 

Still, the knowledge that Chris hasn't sustained an erection for more than a few seconds at a time since John Harrison put a phaser canon shot into his chest almost a year ago makes Jim just a little uncomfortable. The subject has been broached more than once during their late-night comm chats, Chris and Bones hashing through the various stages of Chris's recovery; Jim listening in mute and slightly appalled sympathy, unable to fathom the humiliation of long term impotence. Despite Chris's apparently phlegmatic acceptance that it's a rather extended, but still temporary, reaction to the cocktail of drugs that they are using to control his PTSD, Jim had squirmed in embarrassment each time the subject had come up, remembering a couple of humiliating experiences of whiskey-dick back in his wilder pre-Starfleet days. He's even more uncomfortable with it now, utterly unsure how to get his head around the etiquette involved in sex when getting your partner off isn't part of the equation. 

And then Chris shakes himself out of the stretch and lays a hand on Jim's head to steady his descent into the tub. "No, I'm fine, all I need from you is the pleasure of your company." 

As Chris carefully lowers himself down the flex of powerful biceps briefly transfixes Jim as Chris bears all of his weight on his arms before sinking into the water and stretching out in obvious relief. "Okay, that's good. Now, go get yourself a beer and then sit and tell me how my girl is doing."

Hesitating for a moment, Jim tries to parse Chris's sentence, the man must have balls of steel to even think of referring to Captain One as his girl and his confused frown gets a slightly disbelieving laugh in response. 

"The Yorktown, dumbass. You don't seriously think I'd refer to One as a girl?"

Jim can't imagine anyone ever referring to One as a girl. "No, no. I thought you were going to say you'd never refer to her as yours."

"Well, that too, although..." Chris pauses and grins, fond and just a little wistful, "...there was a time."

"Seriously? You guys were a thing?" Jim wonders about that for a moment. He has nothing but the most respectful admiration for Captain One, she's taught him more in the last six months than he'd learned in the Academy in three years; pushed him harder, stretched his intellect and his courage further than he could have imagined when he first set out to prove that he was worthy of the faith that Chris had placed in him when he'd persuaded One – and coerced Command – into making Jim the Yorktown's XO until the Enterprise refit was completed. 

But he's never once in all that time thought of her as a sexual being. She'd worked him so hard he'd never had the time to even speculate on her sex life; never conjured a vision of her in an intimate relationship; never wondered who she'd fucked in the past or even if she fucked at all. In those intense, stress-filled months all he'd seen of her had been the consummate professional; all he'd been aware of was her razor-sharp intelligence and her iron will. 

The moment he'd watched her stare down a Romulan Commander holding hostage a Federation freighter that had accidentally strayed into the Neutral Zone after losing power, he'd understood he was in the presence of the best Starfleet had to offer. Intellectually he'd known that her unblinking determination to risk the Yorktown and her crew for a bunch of beat-up civilians and their ship was just part of the job, but watching all one-point-six-three-meters of her in action had driven home just how fucking awesomely intimidating a Starfleet Captain could be. 

Now as he looks down at Chris, comfortably sprawled out in the bath tub, for all appearances completely un-self conscious about his naked state, he has to steel himself against the sudden flush of heat as he imagines them together, when they were younger; lithe and powerful and fiercely beautiful.

Chris laughs, "Yeah, we were a thing, along with Phil for a while too." 

Boyce? The Surgeon-General? Jim doesn't even let his imagination go there. Intimidating as Boyce is in his own right, he's also tall and rangy and very, very sexy and currently living with Admiral Jonathan Archer III, the living embodiment of a tall, dark, sexy bastard; Jim's never had any problem speculating, in entirely too much detail, about their sex-life.

Forcing himself to forgo the mental image of One, Chris and Boyce together, naked and horizontal, the only coherent thought he can get out is, "Isn't that against regs?"

Chris shrugs and rests his head on the lip of the tub, "Sorta-maybe-not really. Honestly if it doesn't interfere with performance fitness, Starfleet couldn't give a fuck. That second tour on the Yorktown was a long range reconnaissance and survey mission, realistically there aren't a lot of people to fuck other than your crew, and Command long ago gave up the idea of imposing celibacy on crews."

Jim frowns, still a little confused. "Didn't they use to use libido suppressants?"

"Long ago, way before my time, back when Archer-the-original was still out in the black. It's not a good idea, tends to have unanticipated emotional and psychological side-effects." Chris is clearly beginning to relax, eyes closed as he rests his arms on the edge of the tub, his voice getting lower as he gives up any pretense at speaking in complete sentences. 

"Hmm, so that whole lecture I got from Nogura about not fucking in my chain of command, that's all bullshit?" Just the memory of that lecture irritates the fuck out of Jim.

The edge in Jim's voice rouses Chris and he turns his head, eyes clear and lucid, as he chides gently. "Not bullshit. Not exactly. You can't violate the two orders of rank rule, and if heads of department are involved then you need to come up with creative ways to deal with performance evaluations." 

It strikes Jim that he should probably have been aware of those nuances in the regulations given that he'd been fucking his CMO intermittently during his brief six months as Captain of the Enterprise. The tour hadn't lasted long enough for the issue of performance evaluations to come up and even if it had, there is no way in hell either he or Bones would have admitted that they had anything going on. Cavalier to the point of recklessness, it's just one more way Jim had been willing to ignore the rules and responsibilities of command. 

"You were right, you know." 

Chris tilts his head, one eyebrow raised in wordless encouragement and Jim goes on, "About respecting the chair." 

"I know." Chris grins, his eyes warm and teasing, to soften his words. "But you're figuring it out." 

Watching as Chris stretches again and lifts one leg to try to knead the broad muscles of his calf, Jim slides down the side of the tub and pats his leg in an overt invitation. With a slightly weary smile, Chris rests his heel on Jim's knee so that he can take over the massage and, his voice thready with pain and gratitude, he whispers, "Thanks." 

Jim runs his fingers firmly up and down the tight muscle, searching for the tense spots applying the expertise Bones had imparted in countless post-combat-training massage sessions back at the Academy. And after a moment Chris relaxes and leans back as he continues the conversation about sex and starship duty. "But it can be done. Hell, Jim your parents were on the Kelvin together for thirteen months – first officer and chief engineer – and they were definitely fucking, otherwise you wouldn't be here."

"I guess..." Jim frowns briefly, still indignant. "...so why the lecture?"

"You have something of a reputation, especially amongst your Academy class." The unspoken what's left of them gives both of them pause and Jim nods an acknowledgment of the moment, before Chris continues, "Not that I think that it's necessarily deserved, but the old man was just being careful." He stretches languidly and tips his head back onto the padded headrest and his eyes are merry as he looks up and admits. "He might just have given me that same speech twenty-five years ago when I took command of the Tuckey."

"You had a reputation too?"

"What do you think?"

There’s a brief moment when Jim considers trying for a serious response, but the habit of glib and superficial is too deeply ingrained and the easy answer is on the tip of his tongue before he can stop himself, a facile crack about all those Academy cadets he'd overheard talking about Chris. Trewartha offering to blow Nthethe if he'd switch sections with him and Shran trying to hack the registration systems-core to override the section limits on Chris's Advanced CQC class. 

"I think half the fleet must have wanted to fuck you when you were my age." Trying not to be distracted by the brief thought that perhaps George Kirk and Win Davis had been among that number, Jim carries on. "Not that it's any different now; do you have any idea what the competition was like to get into your Advanced CQC class?" He grins, cheeky and teasing, willing to betray more than a few confidences in the interests of making sure Chris believes him. "Seriously, you got voted "most fuckable instructor" every year you were in residence."

"You are so full of shit, Jim." Chris's tone is far kinder than his words, his voice shot through with amused gratitude. 

"I'm serious, ask Bones, he'll back me up." Jim trails his fingers through the water, sly and impudent, skating lightly across Chris's shin and then up over his thigh, teasing as the muscles jump and flex under his touch. "Or you could just check the comments on the cadet chat-room for that class. I bet I could hack into it for you."

"Thanks, but no. I've never had any particular desire to know what the cadets thought of me outside of class." Chris reaches out and Jim finds his wandering hand stalled on its path up the inside of Chris's thigh. "Now, go get that beer; I want that update on the Yorktown, she's getting old, I want to know how's she holding up."

The water is starting to cool by the time Jim finishes his beer and Chris has been leaning back with his eyes closed for twenty minutes, interjecting only occasionally with questions and thoughts as Jim talks through his six months on the Yorktown.

"I'm glad you liked serving on her, she's a good ship." 

"Yeah, good crew too." Jim pauses, watching carefully as Chris stretches his neck and then links his fingers together behind his skull and pulls himself upright in one slow, smooth motion – fuck, that abdominal curl is distracting as hell – and his eyes are a clear blue-gray; solemn and ever so slightly sad, as they hold Jim's gaze. "You know they're thinking of decommissioning her? Barnett says she's too old to hold the line against the new Romulan war-birds." 

It's blindingly clear that Chris isn't really talking about the Yorktown.

Jim shrugs, he's never had much time for Barnett, even less now if he's going to go around making Chris feel shitty about his post-injury competence. "What the fuck does he know, he's a fucking lawyer. Experience is way the fuck more important than age." 

Chris tilts his head, one eyebrow canted, letting Jim know that his bullshit is utterly transparent. Experience might outweigh age with people – up to a point – but ships don't gain experience, they just become obsolete. The eyebrow goes up another millimeter and Jim takes a breath and grins, happy to be able to deflect Chris's skepticism with a little good news for once. "Well, Barnett doesn't know shit. Captain One got orders for the Bassen Rift right before we docked, so I think decommissioning is on hold for at least another tour."

"Good" Chris smacks Jim's knee lightly, leaving a wet hand print on the cotton pants, "It'll take me a few minutes to get out and dry, how about you be useful and go set up dinner on the breakfast bar."

********

 

While Chris is finishing up in the bathroom Jim helps himself to a lager from the cooler and occupies his time laying the food out on the breakfast bar in the kitchen, finding everything he needs in the take-out bags, but searching out slightly more upscale crockery and utensils than the bioplastic bowls and chopsticks provided with the meal. He wonders for a moment if he should try to find a candle or two, after all this is a date...kind of…and then immediately dismisses the idea – this is Chris for fuck's sake, it's not like Jim has to court him, he's already made his interest very clear. Its only after he's cracked the top of a second lager that Jim looks at the table again and recalls at least one late night vid-com session where he'd noticed the remains of dinner laid out on the coffee table in the family room next door, the glow of three pale green tapers flickering as they melted down over heavy iron candlesticks. 

Fuck yeah it's date; he goes in search of the candlesticks.

He's lighting the third taper when the sound of bare feet on tile makes him turn and he finds Chris standing at his shoulder, reaching across to appropriate the remains of his lager. He's very, very close and for a long moment Jim is mesmerized. There's always something faintly compelling about Chris, but close like this he's positively hypnotic; the wicked sparkle of the steel-shot blue of his eyes softened by a smile – just a bare curve of lips – and Jim realizes that he's well and truly fucked. Because he knows that some part of him has wanted Chris since the moment he looked up from the filthy floor of that Riverside bar to find Chris staring down at him with his head cocked to one side and that half-tease of a smile on his lips.

"Never thought this was going to happen." Jim breaks the tension with an uncharacteristic moment of self-deprecation. 

The smile widens a fraction and Chris reaches out to rub his thumb lightly down Jim's cheek and jaw, and Jim relaxes at the approval in his eyes, clearly he's done a good job with the shaving.

"Wouldn't have been my guess either." Chris pauses, sweeping the thumb across Jim's chin to come to rest lightly on his lower lip, staying Jim's urge to say something smart and glib that will keep the moment light, and Chris's voice is lower as he goes on, wistful almost to the point of melancholy. "I thought my days of bedding beautiful young things were long past."

The silence stretches, and it takes all of Jim's limited patience to let Chris have the moment, to watch as he allows a little of the fear and vulnerability of the last few years to be visible on his face and in the tension of his body. Jim understands, even if he could never articulate how, that Chris needs this emotional transparency – that all of them are going to need it – if they are to find some way of making this complicated threesome function for longer than a few weeks, but for right now it's too much and he takes a half-step back, breaking the spell of intimacy and deflecting the tension. 

"Then Bones came along, all sexy and gorgeous like he is and you realized you could still pull anyone you wanted."

It works and the mood of transient melancholy dissipates as Chris laughs "Yeah, that was kind of a surprise too." He steps back a fraction and lifts the pilfered bottle of beer to his lips, holding Jim's gaze as if he's daring him to object. It's not that Jim minds sharing the beer, but he's a little unsure whether alcohol is against the rules for Chris, and he's ridiculously grateful when the bottle is returned to the counter-top shy only a mouthful of liquid. The last thing Jim wants is Bones on his case for letting Chris take gratuitous health risks. 

"It's okay, I'm permitted the occasional indulgence." Chris levers himself onto a barstool and starts to fix his saucer of tamari, wasabi and the spicy Mintakan fish-roe that sets this cuisine apart from conventional sushi and Jim takes the chance to ask, "How has it been, the last couple of months?"

Chris shrugs as he picks a prettily constructed piece of ahi sashimi off the serving plate. "I don't know how much Len has shared with you."

"Not a lot. I know he's been worried about you but I get the sense things are going okay." It sometimes annoys Jim that Bones is too much of a professional to open up, even to Jim, about Chris's medical status.

"Well I've had better years, but considering what could have happened I think I'm doing pretty well."

It's the closest either of them has come to acknowledging the events of early February and Jim occupies himself with his lager for a moment before he blurts out. "They told me you'd died, you know? Before I went after Harrison. Even Spock thought you were gone." The pain of it is still surprisingly fierce; the memory of Alex Marcus, solemn and pale on the vid screen as he'd announced the loss of seventeen Starfleet personnel including Admiral Pike. 

"I know, if Harrison hadn't done the job for me I'd have hunted Alex down and killed him myself just for that. I'm sorry you had to go through that Jim, at least when you died you'd been resurrected by the time I got to hear about it." Chris sets his chopsticks down on the edge of his plate and reaches across to rub his fingers gently across the back of Jim's hand as they pay a moment of silent tribute to the hell that Bones had suffered during those terrible hours when he’d thought both of them were dead. "We don't need to rehash this tonight, Jim. We talked enough about it when we were both trapped in that fucking hospital." And then he strokes the back of his hand down Jim's cheek again, his fingers warm and teasing as they run back and forth along the smooth line of his jaw. "Tonight, we're going to look forward, not back, yeah?"

The touch sends a sharp stab of desire threading through Jim, his heart rate tripping up even as his cock twitches awake. He's been half-hard ever since Chris stripped to get into the bath, his dick wickedly sensitive, reacting to everything; every touch, every knowing look and above all every sensuous stretch of Chris's naked body. There's something rare and exquisitely seductive about this slow burn. Even with Bones sex for Jim is usually a fairly efficient affair of naked bodies and a rapid sprint to orgasm. Knowing that there will be sex tonight, even if he doesn't know what form it's going to take; knowing that Chris wants him even in the face of his inability achieve release himself, has kept Jim's libido at a low simmer all evening. 

"We're really going to do this?" 

"Oh yeah, we're really going to do this." Chris slides his hand to the nape of Jim's neck and tugs him close enough that they can almost breathe each other's air and Jim leans into the pressure of strong fingers on his skin, enthralled by the clarity of Chris's eyes, the blue faded to moon-pale gray. And just as the anticipation of the kiss is about to become overwhelming, Chris grins and tightens his grip a fraction. "But not until we've eaten."

The sushi is just as good as Jim remembers and they both take a few minutes to appreciate the taste and texture of the raw fish, wild-caught and fresh, easily the best food Jim's had in months. He watches as Chris delicately dips a piece of sashimi in a carefully mixed combination of roe, tamari and far more wasabi than he would personally find palatable, and then his whole body reacts to the tease of Chris's tongue catching a drip of sauce that's escaping down one chopstick. 

Damn, damn, damn; he wants to know what that mouth feels like on his body, what that tongue feels like skating across his skin and playing in all the sensitive dips and hollows of his flesh and, if the look in his eyes is any indication, Chris is well aware of what his little display of lingual dexterity is doing to Jim as he chases another drip down onto his fingers and licks across his knuckles. Fuck; Jim winces at the sharp flash of hunger that tugs a cord all the way from his chest to his cock and wishes that he wasn't quite so half-naked; the flush of heat on his skin and teasing pull of taut nipples drawing Chris's eye and exposing his entirely too obvious need. Chris's grin is shark-like, swift and slightly predatory and, leaning back on the barstool, Jim groans faintly and pleads, "Are you going to fuck with me like this all the way through dinner?"

Chris grins wider, "Not all the way." And then switches his focus to the sashimi.

Jim can't quite contain a slightly nervous laugh, momentarily overwhelmed at the thought of Chris teasing him unmercifully and with no prospect of letting him come anytime soon. As confident as he is about most things he's really not sure he can do delayed gratification; waiting for things has never been one of Jim's strengths. He likes his pleasures immediate and intense and he's never seen the reason to play waiting games with his orgasm. But neither can he bear the thought of disappointing Chris. So much of Jim's life over the last few years has been about making Chris proud and the kind of control and self-denial embodied in not coming in the face of whatever slow-burn tease Chris has in mind is just one more way for him to demonstrate that his six months in the black with One has finally begun to tame the rash, impulsive idiot that changed the history of Nibiru forever. A moment to gather his resolve – Chris watching him, head tilted, his gaze curious – and Jim grins, "Okay, whatever you got, I can take it."

For just a moment the predatory look softens and Chris's smile is fond and genuine. "Don't doubt that for an instant, Jim."

The rest of the meal is an exercise in reluctant restraint, Jim parrying each tease from Chris first with humor and then with an increasingly wanton hunger as he gets a handle on just how close he can edge towards orgasm without succumbing to the need to wrap his hand around his cock and finish himself in one long stroke. 

"You have no fucking idea how beautiful you are when you're desperate." Chris is leaning across the breakfast bar, his eyes dark with lust, his hand flat against Jim's chest and the palm is warm and damp against the rapid thrum of his heart beat. For a long moment they are both silent and the blood is rushing in Jim's veins, maybe now Chris is going to relent and let him take the edge off. 

But then Chris pulls away and Jim is skewered by that familiar, acutely insightful gaze and his whole body goes cold, his arousal fading; the evening is about to get real. 

"Okay, so what do I need to know?" Chris is making it easy on him, initiating the conversation over dinner so that it doesn't trip them up later, but Jim still isn't entirely comfortable with these conversations so he shrugs and looks down at his plate, using one chopstick to trace a figure eight in the lake of spicy soy and fish-roe sauce on his plate.

"You didn't ask Bones?" 

"No, this is a conversation we need to have one on one." A hand appears in Jim's field of vision, his eyes still fixed on the tabletop, and one finger stills the motion of the chopstick. "Look at me, Jim." He's not quite using that voice, the one that even Jim has never been able to resist, but the tone of it, deep and warm, is still profoundly compelling and, reluctantly, Jim lifts his chin.

"Okay, what do you want to know?"

He gets Chris's infamous raised eyebrow in return. "I know you've had these conversations before, Jim. Just tell me what's off-limits."

Another shrug and Jim relents, almost embarrassed to admit, "Nothing's going to make me totally freak out..." A pause and he can't quite rein in the smart-assed, cocky grin as he remembers the Hantavarian lounge singer with the amazing pulsing vagina and the half meter tongue, "...at least nothing I've tried so far has." 

Chris raises an eyebrow, in that way he has that makes Jim feel like he's about to get seriously schooled, and then an evil little grin pulls at the corner of his mouth as he drawls, slow and seductive. "Oh son, then you haven't been out in the black nearly long enough." 

Momentarily resentful at the implication that his sex life is a little vanilla, Jim pauses and then shrugs off the brief offense, too curious not to ask. "Do I even want to know?"

Chris's grin spreads into a beautiful, teasing smile, his eyes bright as he offers "Tentacles." 

"Fuck! Really?" Jim can't decide if that's really hot or just weird, but a little pulse of heat in his groin suggests that his subconscious is very taken with the idea and he wriggles on the barstool, spreading his legs a little to give his cock room to calm down. 

"Yeah really, but that's a story for another night." And Chris gestures with both hands, encouraging Jim to finish the original conversation. "So nothing that you know of is going to make you freak out, but is there anything you don't like, anything that'll kill your hard-on?"

Jim pauses, there are a couple of things that he really doesn't like even if he's never taken the time to figure out why, and he appreciates that Chris does nothing more than rub his knuckles gently as he figures out how to phrase the next sentence. "If there's a cock in my mouth, I kinda need to be in control of what happens next." He holds Chris's gaze willing him to understand that the subtext here is more about physical comfort than power issues, but all he gets reflected back is a wry self-effacement. "Well, that's not going to be an issue with me anytime in the near future."

It's not that Jim had entirely forgotten about Chris's physiological issues but he still winces at his own lack of tact. "Sorry, I guess I could have passed on telling you that right now."

"Don't worry about it." Chris rubs the back of his hand again and prompts, "Anything else?"

"Not really into knives, or heat...you know like hot wax...that kinda thing..." He pauses, "...or humiliation; I really don't like humiliation." And before Chris can make a misguided attempt to draw any deep meaning from that Jim cuts him off. "There's no deep dark ugly secret in my past, nothing to do with Frank, it just doesn't do anything for me, okay?" 

For a fraction of a second Chris hesitates and Jim thinks he's going to push the point but then the moment is past and rather than concern, he's treated to Chris's wry humor. "Okay; well that's not a problem either, I've exhausted all my humiliation reserves on the last few years of advanced tactical students." 

His mouth twists in a brief smile that lifts the tension and promises laughter and seduction in equal part. "So, the stuff you like; the things that really turn you on and make you crazy, I'll figure those out for myself." And there is a spark of teasing delight in his eyes as he traces one long, clever finger across the back of Jim's hand, teasing over the bones and around the knuckles with a delicate, tempting touch. For a moment Jim is captivated by the dexterity of those strong, capable fingers. He's always been turned on by hands, it's one of the things that he first noticed about Bones, those big, clever doctor's hands and he notices now that Chris's fingers have that same careful agility; the hands of a pilot, an engineer, a musician and the sudden realization that those fingers are about to get to know him very, very intimately sends another spark of urgent, aching need flashing through Jim's body. He shivers and looks up through his lashes to find Chris staring intently at him, all the teasing humor gone, his eyes dark with desire and the shadow of something bitter and fearful.

With a final stroke of fingers the hand is withdrawn and Chris sits back, his face shifting, the wry smile faded to an impassive mask and it takes Jim a moment to realize that Chris is waiting for him to continue the conversation. It takes a whole different kind of courage to reciprocate Chris's initial question, because Jim has absolutely no doubt that Chris does have triggers. Recent traumas notwithstanding, Jim's not really sure he can imagine the kind of scars that thirty years of Starfleet service, most of it in the black can inflict on a psyche, even one as apparently resilient as Chris Pike's. And he hesitates, reluctant to step into the darkness of Chris's nightmares, afraid that knowing the specifics will chip away just a little further at this remarkable man's apparent invincibility. And, after watching him come through two devastating physical assaults in as many years, right now Jim needs the immediate security of an invulnerable Chris. 

But, if he's learned nothing else in the last few years it's that life is too short to let his adolescent coping techniques – deflection, avoidance and the tendency to retreat into humor when conversations get difficult and painful – sabotage the few really important relationships in his life. With a tilt of his head and shift of his body he forces himself to relax and asks, "So what about you?"

It's Chris's turn to hesitate and then the wry humor is back; darker and laced with more than a measure of self-contempt. "How long have you got?" Jim can see real insecurity buried deep in Chris's eyes and he pulls out his inner adult, suppressing his gut instinct to try to sidetrack the moment with humor. "As long as you need."

Jim slides a reassuring hand across the table and Chris reaches to meet him half way, one finger going back to tracing abstract patterns on Jim's knuckles. "Okay, well." He pauses and then launches into a list, his voice curt and precise as if this is something he's rehearsed in his head and needs to get out before he forgets anything. "No knives, no pain, no blindfolds; no restraints of any kind; no weight on my upper body; no loud noises; definitely no gags; in fact nothing in my mouth – fingers, tongues, cocks – that I haven't explicitly invited in." A pause for breath and then he goes on, "No temperature play, especially not heat; no dripping water, so sorry, no sex in the shower and..." there's a long pause "...nothing rough against my face."

Jim rubs his cheek, reminding himself of the half hour of labor in front of the bathroom mirror. "Did I do okay?" And leans across the table for Chris to feel for himself, luxuriating in the feel of Chris's fingers stroking put the smooth, smooth skin of his cheek and then down along his jawline.

"You did great, I should be just fine."

Most of Chris's triggers are pretty straightforward given the hell he's been through in the past two years, but there's a part of Jim that wants to ask about the stubble and he takes a breath to frame the question, only to be cut off by a brief, tight squeeze of his fingers. "Don't ask, not tonight. I'll tell you sometime, but there's some things I don't want in my head when we're about to go make out in front of the fire."

And Jim lets it go, there's time enough for them to flesh out this conversation later and he deflects. "So, if those are all the things that you don't like. What does turn you on? What makes you go crazy?"

"You don't find that out by talking, Jim; for that we need to be naked and horizontal."


	3. Part III

With dinner cleared away Jim transports the candlesticks into the family room and, pushing the coffee table away from the hearth, he clears a space for them both to settle into the pile of cushions and quilts that he pulls down from the two couches that frame the fireplace. He has to fiddle with the controls to the fire before he can get the flames at the right height and then, once he's relit the remnants of the tapers, he settles in to wait for Chris. Even without the warmth radiating from the plasma fire that dances through real oak and hickory logs – the flames glowing in every shade of yellow and orange as they slip harmlessly around the wood – the room is comfortable enough for bare skin and as Jim stretches out on the well worn cotton of an old Starfleet-issue duvet he wriggles himself into a comfortable nest and watches as Chris walks slowly towards him. 

Fatigue is still dragging at him, but the stiffness of earlier is gone and Jim is transfixed by the easy way Chris moves, the drape of cotton sleep pants that hang just a little too low on his hips, the tantalizing spread of graying hair that covers his chest and feathers out across the flat planes of his abdomen, the line becoming darker and thicker as it disappears into pale, faded, sage-green cotton. 

"Fuck, I could spend all night watching you walk across a room."

Chris lowers himself to the couch, before sliding onto the floor to share Jim's nest, and there's the thinnest rime of bitterness laced through his slightly facetious response, "Yeah, well, all the scars are on the other side."

Unable to stop himself from touching, Jim lays a hand flat on Chris's chest, and stares him down "Don't give afuck about the scars." And then he quirks a grin, fingers teasing lightly through silky curls that feel far better than anything his imagination could ever have conjured. "Anyway, got a few of my own now. Since I skipped over that whole first officer thing the first time round I'd kinda forgotten that the XO is on the front lines every fucking time you hit dirt.”

"One make you work for your keep, did she?" Chris settles himself deeper into the pile of quilts, shrugging one up over his shoulders before letting his head fall back against the couch cushions in a gesture that Jim takes as an invitation to continue his single-minded investigation of Chris's naked torso. 

"Damn right. Didn't violate twelve-twelve-five once in that whole tour." Taking full advantage of the license he's been given to explore, Jim leans down and punctuates his reply with a series of light touches, his mouth tracing down and then back up the centerline of Chris's chest, gratified when his attentions are rewarded with the touch of a gentle hand stroking the back of his head. 

"Feels good." Chris's voice is low and content, and Jim can feel the tension bleeding away as a broad hand slides over the back of his neck and across his shoulders. Then Chris clears his throat and, fingers kneading gently at the tight muscles of Jim's shoulders, he picks up the conversation, "She learned from the best." 

There's a catch in Chris's voice that might be some kind of wistful longing for the past but then Jim feels a half-suppressed laugh shiver through the lean frame and he raises his head, looking close enough to see the mischief in steel-blue eyes that are shining with amused self-deprecation. 

He grins, relaxing as he recognizes that Chris is giving him permission to tease, "She'd eviscerate you for saying that, wouldn't she?"

"What do you think?"

"I somehow think she called all the shots even when she was your XO"

"Damn straight; I wouldn't have survived a year on the Yorktown without her." And now his voice is wistful as he shakes his head, the moment of nostalgia lending a wry twist to his mouth. "She and Phil and I, damn we were the best command team Starfleet had."

"You think we can be as good?" Jim winces as that unfiltered thought comes out of his mouth, but either Chris doesn't hear the deep-seated insecurity in it, or chooses to ignore it. 

"Hell, yeah, I wouldn't go out there again if I didn't think that. It's dangerous as fuck out there, Jim and we're going to keep each other alive; each other and our crew, and try to keep our girl in one piece in the face of asteroids and meteor showers and supernovas and pissed off Klingons and Tzenkethi raiders, Orion pirates and over-territorial Romulans."

"Fuck, you sound like Bones; all death and destruction." There's still a part of Jim that marvels that Bones has consented to a life in space with all its attendant risks and uncertainties, and it makes him almost endlessly tolerant of Bones' entirely too-frequent rants about disease and disaster and dangerous encounters. 

"Sorry." Chris shakes his head. "It's a lot of good things too, I don't need to tell you that." And then he turns slightly and Jim can't stop himself from leaning into the touch of a warm hand that comes to rest along the curve of his jaw. "But we're getting sidetracked. As much as I would love to talk five-year-mission with you, right now I think there are far better things you could be doing with that smart mouth of yours." 

Jim leans in, the promising tease in Chris's eyes sending sharp little sparks of need flashing though his body, and then he hesitates again, aware that he's venturing into unfamiliar territory. "I have no fucking idea what I'm doing, you know that, right?"

Chris laughs quietly, his breath a soft tease against Jim's bare shoulder. "Don't worry, I've had lots of practice pretending I'm twelve again."

"You started young."

"Hmmm...I did...but that's another story for a different night, right now I want you to relax and stop trying so hard." His fingers tease across Jim's stomach, trailing close to the low-slung waist of the soft flannel sleep pants and Jim shudders at the sudden need that sparks up his spine. "No more procrastinating." Chris is leaning close, and Jim's eyes slide closed as a warm mouth brushes the skin of his shoulder. This feels unbelievably good, the heat of Chris's breath, the feel of his fingers teasing through the narrow trace of hair that feathers down from Jim's navel and his hips flex involuntarily as his cock firms and rises, blood flushed and eager at the possibility of being touched by a hand other than his own. He swallows hard to restrain an aching little whimper of need at the feel of Chris's nails scratching lightly against his skin. 

"Will it help if I take the edge off?" The whisper of breath against his neck makes Jim even harder, and he can't quite suppress another pathetically needy whine as his cock brushes up against the cotton of his pants. 

"Oh yeah. Please."

The feel of Chris laughing is totally at odds with the evil things his fingers are doing to the sensitive skin in the curve of Jim's pelvis and the whine ratchets up a half-note.

"Well, sorry but... " Chris punctuates the pause with the sharp tease of teeth in the curve of Jim's shoulder "...I think you're going to have to wait...journey, remember, not destination." And as the back of one finger makes fleeting contact with his cock through the open gape of his sleep pants, Jim arches incapable of any response but a breathy "Goddammit, Chris."

The laugh is a deep rumble against Jim's throat, and then there are lips, soft and mobile and teasing against his skin as Chris whispers. "Seriously, you've never played the "you don't get to come until I let you" game?" And Chris skims his palm up the cotton-clad arc of Jim's erection, just the lightest contact, just enough to make Jim arch towards the touch, his hips flexing up off the floor in desperate want as he groans out a slightly fractured answer. 

"No, no I fucking haven't...sex is about coming...not about..." and then Jim realizes what's coming out of his mouth and comes to an embarrassed, stuttering halt. "S...sorry...didn't mean that, it's just you're driving me fuckin' nuts..." And he squirms, pressing up into Chris's hand, his cock painfully sensitive against the heat and pressure of Chris's fingers as they move over warm, damp cotton. "...just tell me you're oaky with this."

Chris just laughs quietly and withdraws his hand, letting the back of his fingers brush up and down the curve of Jim's belly and tease at the cotton cord that ties the sleep pants closed. "It's okay, really, tonight I don't care that I can't come, tonight I'm going to get my pleasure driving you insane, teaching you just how un-fucking-believably fantastic it is not to come. Len's going to be home in about an hour, from now until then you are going to let me touch you and tease you and get you so fucking close, and so, so ready." 

"Ready for what?" Jim knows exactly what Chris means, but he really wants to hear him say it, and Chris obliges, his voice going impossibly low and dirty. "Get you ready so Len can fuck you through the floor while I watch."

"Fuck, did you guys talk about this today?" Not happy with the slightly elevated pitch that makes him sound like he's desperate and whining Jim cuts his question off with a strangled cough that makes his cock pulse and twitch against his belly. The thought of the two of them discussing having sex with him, fantasizing about how they were mutually going to get him off, makes Jim even harder, and he can feel the cool damp of the growing wet spot on his skin as he begins to leak in anticipation. 

"Today, no..." There is a tease in Chris's voice that softens the low sex-soaked growl of slightly possessive hunger. "...but half a dozen times during the last month; most definitely." And he follows up with a slow slide of his hand, fingers stroking lightly over the thick heat of Jim's still clothed cock, before finally enclosing it in a firm, gentle grasp and, as distracted as Jim is by the intensity of the touch it's the sound of Chris groaning softly into the side of his neck that makes him shiver with renewed need. 

After a moment of stillness Chris slides closer, one leg coming up to wrap around Jim's thigh and this close, separated only by two thin layers of cotton, Jim can feel the soft mass of Chris's cock pressed against his leg. He falters again at the dissonance of the moment and then presses close, forcing his mind past the reality of Chris's impotence to revel in the warmth of skin-to-skin contact. And then Chris rolls to the side and Jim finds himself slowly pressed back into the quilts, all of Chris's seventy five kilos plastered up against him as one deft hand finally tugs the cord on his sleep pants. "Tonight you're going to shut up and relax while I work you until you're dying to come..." A flash of teeth as Chris grins, fierce and slightly predatory, "...but you won't." 

Reveling in the sensation of Chris, half-naked and sprawled all over him, Jim takes a hard breath and shivers as a hot mouth nips at the skin of his shoulder, teasing bites interspersed between soft whispers that promise a kind of pleasure Jim's never experienced. "You won't come, not even when I've got my hand around your cock; not even if I'm jerking you just how you like it, fast and tight, my thumb rubbing right across the head." The voice is just so fucking sexy; deep and low and authoritative and if Jim had known that Chris had this kind of filthy mouth he'd never have made it through Advanced CQC. 

"Damn it, Chris, you keep talking like that I'll come without you even touching my cock."

"No, no, no; no coming until I say you can." Chris is still playing with the opening to Jim's pants, fingers skating ever so close to Jim's naked cock as it flexes up in a slow arc, tip damp and slick as it's exposed to the air and Jim trying to cover the aching urgency of his desire with humor. "You going to order me not to?" 

Chris pulls back and his eyes go wide with amused surprise. "You want me to?"

"Fuck yeah." Jim can see how much the idea appeals to Chris, his smile wide and eager as he curves one hand around Jim's jaw and pulls him into a long, lazy, filthy kiss and Jim sinks into the contact, careful to let Chris set the pace, waiting until he feels the teasing slip of a tongue against his lips before he reciprocates and for a few long moments they're both lost in the slick wet heat of a deeply erotic embrace.

Chris is gratifyingly short of breath when they finally separate, his eyes a little unfocused and Jim dares a tease, "Why am I not surprised that you've got an authority kink?" 

"Same reason I'm not surprised you do." Chris laughs quietly as he slides his hand down Jim's chest, heading back towards the now open sleep pants. "Enough talk, I want to touch you." And Jim shudders at the feel of long, clever fingers around his cock as Chris grins and whispers. "I've waited a long time for this." 

And just as Jim's mind is blown by the thought that perhaps Chris was lusting after him way back at the Academy, his synapses short out completely as the tight grip around his cock begins to find a rhythm, pausing for a brief moment – "...lift your ass..." – so they can both work the sleep pants down over Jim's hips and then Chris begins a practiced, skillful grip-and-slide, his thumb pressing just where Jim needs it. 

********

 

"Damn, Chris you gotta give me a break, I'm dyin’ here." There's a crack in Jim's voice as he shudders, his cock wrapped tight in Chris's fist and he has no idea how long they've been lying here, tangled together in a damp, not-entirely-naked embrace. Chris has his head tucked against Jim's shoulder and his mouth is busy doing wicked things to the smooth skin of Jim's throat, but it's that tormenting hand that has brought him to the edge and back at least three times that is driving him to distraction; the piercing ache of orgasm-denied stealing his breath and setting his whole body on fire with the need for release. Breathing hard he reaches down to still Chris's hand, grateful as the fingers unwrap and stroke lightly across his before being withdrawn. And as the urgency begins to slowly recede Jim leans over to rub a sweaty forehead against Chris's equally damp chest before he pushes away trying to will his cock into submission, trying to ignore the sharp desire that flashes through him each time it pulses in time with his too-rapid heartbeat. 

With a quiet chuckle Chris relents, rolling away to stretch out in front of the fire, still close enough to rub his palm across the flat of Jim's belly his voice low and lazy as he concedes, "You've done way better than I expected. I didn't think you'd last ten minutes." 

Jim should probably be offended by that but he just laughs and props himself up on one elbow looking across at Chris stretched out, long and wiry, on the quilt; his body all gray and tan fur brushed with gold as the firelight plays across his skin. And the sight makes his body thrum with a whole different kind of need. He wants to touch, to taste, to see if he can reduce Chris to the same kind of sweaty, aching mess that he's been for the last god-knows-how-long. "My turn..."

Chris looks intrigued and he treats Jim to a half-smile, speculative and curious. "What have you got in mind?"

Not quite sure he should be doing this, Jim reaches for the cord that is still holding Chris's sleep pants closed, his heart in his mouth as he looks up at Chris through lowered lashes – Jim learned very young just how alluring that look is on him – and confesses, "I want to taste you, can I, please?"

"Yeah, that could be really good." The dark heat in Chris's eyes is the best encouragement Jim could ask for and he pulls the cord slowly, a retaliation for Chris's earlier teasing and as he slides down the long, well furred torso he drops a couple of strategically placed kisses on Chris's skin. The smell of Chris is intoxicating, clean sweat and musk underlain with remnants of the earlier bath, and for a long moment Jim just revels in it, smiling against Chris's skin when long fingers curl into his hair and set up a slow, steady stroke through his hair. 

"Is this okay?" Jim looks up, waiting for Chris to tell him that this feels good, because without the evidence of swelling flesh under his tongue, he isn't entirely sure this is a great idea. 

Chris just grins at him. "It's more than okay...really, I'm not by any means impervious to your charms." And as Jim props himself up on one elbow, Chris guides Jim's free hand to the damp curls over his sternum, his skin flushed and warm, the heartbeat rapid and vital beneath Jim's palm "I'm enjoying this more than the external evidence suggests."

"Okay then." Jim takes a breath and, flashing his trademark cheeky smile, he leans back down and sweeps the flat of his tongue across the soft, velvet flesh of Chris's cock; a long, indulgent taste that makes both of them shudder and as Chris relaxes back into the quilts and cushions, Jim applies himself to the single-minded task of mapping every curve and hollow under his tongue.

********

 

"Well good goddam..." His voice a bare whisper in the empty hallway, Leonard H. McCoy is brought up short by the sight that greets him as he drops his work duffle in the hallway and looks into the darkened family room, his eyes going wide at the enticing view of Jim's ass, smooth and golden in the firelight and canted at an appealingly fuckable angle. When he can finally lift his eyes from the temptingly firm curves he finds Chris watching him, lying back on a nest of cushions, the slate gray-blue of his eyes, dark and liquid with lust; skin flushed, hair sticking to his forehead in damp curls, he looks utterly debauched. 

Well, fuck; this worked out a lot better than Len had thought it would. He leans his hip against the doorjamb, and appreciates the tableau laid out on the floor before him; relaxing into the anticipation of what the next few hours will bring. 

"Hey darlin', sure looks like your day got better."

Chris smiles, lazy and content, and releases his grip on Jim's hair so he can stretch and link his fingers together behind his head. It's a gesture Len knows well, a precursor to Chris using those deceptively powerful core muscles to lever himself upright. He pauses for a brief space to let Jim raise his head from where it's been buried in his lap and, then straightens up and rolls his shoulders lazily. "Doubt I need to tell you how good he is with that mouth."

Jim turns his head and grins at Len and, skewered with a sudden, electric-sharp moment of lust, he leans a little more on the old wood of the doorframe and draws a sudden shuddering breath. Jim is just so goddamn fucking beautiful, his eyes a bright lust-glazed turquoise under those strong dark brows, his lips deep red, cock-flushed and full.

"About fucking time, I'm gonna die if I don't get off soon." And just to make the point Jim rolls away from Chris, his cock springing up dark and full as he settles on his back and wiggles his hips in a cheeky invitation that makes Len chuckle and shiver all at the same time, he's been thinking about the two of them all evening, his paperwork abandoned more than once as he was distracted by visions of Jim's playful enthusiasm tempered and softened by Chris's slow-burn approach to pleasure. 

"He wouldn't let you come?" His voice cool and amused, Len has zero sympathy for Jim's plight, he's been on the receiving end of Chris's orgasm-denial game more than once, but before Jim has time to reply he shifts his attention back to Chris. "You didn't take the edge off for him?"

"Not a chance, I want to see mutual orgasms tonight...I want to watch you fuck him until he comes all over himself." There's a predatory gleam in Chris's eyes and Len can feel a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth, relief and desire mingling at the sight of Chris leaning back on his arms, muscles flexed, his cock nestled soft in the silver and bronze curls at his groin. 

As the intimacy has grown between them over the last few months there have been more than a few misunderstandings as the two of them awkwardly hedged around Chris's impotence, and it has taken Len long frustrating weeks to reconcile his own desires, self-absorbed and excessive as they seem to him, with Chris's uncomplicated pleasure in just being touched. Apparently, Jim has taken to the task of making Chris feel good with a lot less soul-searching, and Len is gratified and not a little envious of his ability to live in the moment and not overthink everything. 

Now Jim is lying on his back, his head resting on Chris's thigh, beckoning with one teasing finger. "C'mon, Bones. I need your cock." He shifts, letting his legs fall open and his next breath comes in a hard gasp as Chris slides a hand down across his chest and rubs his thumb across a furled nipple.

Len can see the need to come in the shivering tension of his muscles. "I'll be right there, darlin'." His own voice is a little unsteady as all the blood rushes to his cock, at the sight of Jim, wanton and needy and so very, very desperate.

Grateful that he had the foresight to shower before he left the hospital, Len sheds clothes in an untidy trail as he walks across the floor, and he's naked by the time he reaches the cozy nest of cushions and quilts by the fire. Settling down on Chris's left side he pulls a quilt over his shoulders and leans in for a kiss, warm and welcoming. 

"Good to have you home, we've been waiting..." Chris pauses and tugs at Jim's hair gently encouraging him to wriggle up until he's also in kissing range, "...some of us not very patiently."

Jim grins and Len pulls him close for a brief, if filthy-deep, kiss before he asks, "What do you need, sweetheart?" Without waiting for a reply he slides a hand down Jim's torso seeking out the slippery damp heat of an eager cock. "Damn, you're hard." Jim whines, the pulse of his cock in Len's hand setting up a sympathetic throb in his own groin and he stretches across Chris's torso for another kiss, both of them leaning on the solid warmth of his chest, the tickle of coarse curls adding an additional tease of sensation. The kiss lingers, all eager heat and the sweet familiar taste of Jim, until Chris tugs gently on his hair and Len pulls away and quirks an inquisitive eyebrow at him. 

The predatory gleam is back, Chris's eyes dancing with it, the blue-gray contracted to a narrow ring around fathomless black. "Watching you kiss is hot as all fuck, but I want to watch you fuck him, please." The last word is controlled, but Len can hear the edge of desperation in it and there's something inordinately sexy about Chris when he's on the edge of pleading, all that cool authority abandoned in the face of the immediate needs of his body. 

Hesitating for just a second, Len pauses; very occasionally, if he's not too tired and they're relaxed enough to take their time, it's possible for Chris to achieve something close to a real orgasm, and there's a part of Len that would really like to make that happen tonight. But the fine lines around Chris's eyes are deeper than usual, weariness etched into the droop of his eyelids and the tension in the muscles of his neck and shoulders and even though he's clearly turned on as all fuck right now, he's just as clearly exhausted. 

Clairvoyant as ever, Chris holds Len's gaze for a moment and smiles, one side of his mouth curving up just a fraction, his eyes clear and lucid. "Don't even think about it Len, I'm tired and lazy tonight. I just want to watch you guys do all the work. We can play "how do we get Chris to come" tomorrow, when there's a lot better chance I won't stroke out from the effort." 

"You're the boss..." 

"Got that right." The voice is low; the sexy, assertive rumble that Chris affects when he's in the mood to exercise his authority kink and Len shakes his head even as he feels Jim shudder as he tries to choke off a somewhat undignified giggle. 

"So, he's like this with you too." Jim looks up, his cheek resting on Chris's chest, and the delight in his eyes makes it abundantly clear that he's loving the idea of Chris letting his inner-captain out for the evening. 

The question is addressed to Len, but Chis answers with a sharp laugh. "Hell yeah, I'm like that with him too, makes up for all the shit he puts me through when he's in don't-question-your-physician mode." There's enough humor in Chris's tone that Len understands that he's mostly joking about the bossy-doctor thing, and he rubs a hand over Chris's chest, revealing in the crisp rasp of hair under his palm.

"Okay then boss, what do you need."

Chris stretches, scoots back until he's resting against the couch, his hands linked behind his head again. "I need you two to get your fucking act together and have sex, so I can watch, and maybe imagine what it's going to be like when I can join in and fuck both of you into the middle of next week." He crosses one leg over the other and looks down at his quiescent cock, one eyebrow quirked in wry self-deprecation. "At least while I can still remember what fucking feels like."

Self-deprecation is Chris's coping mechanism and for a second Jim looks appalled, as if he can't believe Chris is joking about something so potentially humiliating, but before he can ruin the entire evening by doing something as stupid as trying to offer sympathy, Len deflects the conversation, reaching over to tap Chris on the knee.

"Is he prepped."

Before Chris can respond Jim breaks in, his voice thready with desperation. "Don't need prep, just lube." He looks up at Len, eyes dark, dark sapphire and wide with the challenge of what he's offering. "Go on Bones, I know you want to." 

And damn it all, he does want to. It's not something they've ever done, as fast and hard as they've fucked over the years, there's always been an almost over-solicitous concern on Len's part, a gut feeling that Jim may not always have been treated well in the past, and a need to show him that sex, at least when he's bottoming, is all about just how good he can feel. They've never really explored the possibility that rough and just a little uncomfortable can also be really, really good. 

"You sure?" As he's speaking Len reaches for the lube that Chris has kindly slid across the coffee table, opening the seal with one hand and then gasping at the chill of it on his flesh. 

"Fuck yeah, I can even get him to make it an order if you want." Jim's gaze is fixed on the movement of Len's hand as it slips smoothly up the curve of his cock, the sound of it wet and slick and thick with the promise of sex. 

"It's not an order if you suggest it first, but if it'll make Len feel better. Len, fuck him just the way he is, right now. Use that incredible cock of yours to open him up." In the moment of silence that follows Chris's words all three of them pause, and Len can feel the tension in the air, the anticipation making his breath catch in his throat and his cock pulse with each too-fast beat of his heart. 

And then he growls out a deep, slightly desperate, "Yes, sir." The sound of it slightly sullen on his reluctant tongue, the submission hard on Len's natural bloody-mindedness. 

With one last glance at Chris's face, the blue-gray of his eyes dark with fascinated lust, Len shivers, slightly off-kilter at the rapt attention, and it strikes him that he's never knowingly had sex in with an audience before. And fuck, that should probably make him a lot more than mildly uncomfortable, but this is Chris, his Chris, their Chris and somehow he can't imagine that this is anything other than exactly the way it should be. 

Prompted by a whine from Jim he turns back to the warm, smooth, sweat-flushed body beneath him and sets to obeying orders. 

With a gentle stroke up a damp chest, he presses Jim down onto the quilts and sits back on his heels, sliding one broad hand up the underside of Jim's thighs, pushing up and back until Jim takes over and wraps his hands around his legs, and he's so vulnerable, so completely exposed that Len has to grip his cock hard to stop himself from coming just at the sight. 

"Fuck, Jim, you ready for this?" And he strokes the tip of his cock; slick and wet down the hot smooth skin of Jim's thigh.

A quiet groan from Chris makes both of them look across and the way Chris has his cock cradled in his hand, thumb rubbing against the soft flesh in a firm, regular rhythm, is un-fucking-believably erotic. "Do it, Len...fuck him...do it for me."

With a low, soft groan, Len slips the tip of his cock up against Jim's tight, flexing entrance and presses firmly. There's moment of resistance and then Jim cants his hips to change the angle a fraction and Len can feel the pressure easing as Jim relaxes and yields and then he's sliding deep and the shock of pressing deep into Jim's body, slick and hot and tight as a vice makes him whine and whimper. "Dammit, Jim; goddammit you're so fucking tight."

Jim just grunts and hitches his hips, forcing Len deeper. With one long, slow slide he bottoms out, Jim's legs over his shoulders as he leans close and wraps his hands around Jim's wrists to pin him to the floor, gasping at the shock of electric sensation that sparks down his spine. Anchored by his spread knees and captivated by the way Jim's eyes have gone so dark the iris is nothing but a thin turquoise rim around velvet-dark pupils, Len pulls back and then slides in again, testing the angle until Jim shudders beneath him, fingers flexing and gripping tight into the quilts that are wadded under his body. Just there, that's the perfect angle, and he sets up a hard, fast rhythm, looking down as Jim's cock twitches between them in a slow arc, leaving a damp trail of sticky fluid in the fine line of hair that trails down from his navel. His cock thick and deeply flushed, Jim looks painfully aroused and, taking pity on him, Len raises his gaze to Chris who is watching them with a rapt intensity even as he continues to touch himself. 

"Can he come?" Amazed that he can articulate an entire sentence, even if it's only three words, Len is fighting his own orgasm, continuing to stroke slowly into Jim, the thrusts, slower and deeper and expertly targeted to brush across Jim's prostate with his entire, not insubstantial, length. 

"Only when I say the word." 

There's steel in Chris's voice and usually Len wouldn't even consider trying to change his mind, but Jim is twisting under him, his breath coming in whimpering exhales as his cock pulses hard in time with Len's slow thrusts and he's so far beyond speech that Len can only, very uncharacteristically, take pity on him. Jim's never been good with delayed gratification. 

"Say it, Chris." 

There's silence as Len holds Chris's gaze and, the tension is a physical thing for a long moment until Chris relaxes against the couch cushions and smiles, mouthing a silent "Okay." Before he orders in a molasses-slow growl. "Jim, come for us. Come for us, now."

And Jim complies. 

With a snap of his hips and a long, low whining howl his body convulses and he's coming in long, arcing streams that cover his chest and belly and, in one particularly spectacular spurt, manage to splatter up across Len's neck and chin. And then Len's lost, the taste of Jim, hot and sharp on his lips, sending him spiraling towards his own release in a series of short, brutally deep thrusts that pin a still writhing Jim to the floor and generate a moan of frustrated arousal from Chris. 

It seems to take an age for Len's head to clear and when he's lucid again he finds himself sprawled all over Jim, the two of them wrapped together, sweat slick and breathless in front of the fire and there's a warm weight pressed against his side that smells of Chris. 

"That..."Chris's voice is very soft, and very, very low, "...was the hottest thing I've seen in years." His lips are so close that Len can feel the heat of his breath on every exhale and if he wasn't so utterly spent the sound and feel of a still aroused and clearly very content Chris would be enough to make him seriously consider at least lifting his head for a kiss. But any movement is out of the question for at least a few more minutes and he contents himself with a slight hum in response and a shift of his weight so he doesn't suffocate Jim while they both recover. 

For a while the silence is broken only by the artificial crackle of the fake flames in the fireplace and sound of all three of them breathing, the slow rise and fall of Jim's chest indicating that he is, in the absence of any other indications, still alive. It's only when Jim groans softly and nuzzles into the side of Len's neck that Chris leans across and nudges Len to roll to the side, and Jim ends up sandwiched between the two of them, stretching slowly before he finally opens his eyes and indulges in a tired, slightly goofy grin. 

"Damn, that was amazing." He tilts his head, the grin wider as he looks up at Len, "I hit you in the chin? I had no idea I could fire one off that far."

"Infant..." There's a fond amusement in Len's tone, he's been using that insult on Jim for far too long and there's no sting left in it. "... only you could be proud of how far you can ejaculate."

Chris interrupts with a quiet cough and a shrug. "I don't know, Phil and I would occasionally see how far away we could stand and still it the bulkhead in my quarters. One thought it was pretty cool." 

Not sure whether to laugh or roll his eyes in exasperation Len contents himself with a grumpy, "Fucking Starfleet captains." And then leans across to brush a fleeting kiss across Chris's lips, wincing as the muscles in his back protest the movement. "You think we can peel ourselves off the floor and get to bed, I'm too damn old for this." He's tired too, not that he really wants to admit it, but sex with Jim is always exhausting, and sex with Chris is still something of an emotional minefield, combining the two has been draining in a whole new way and coming off an eight hour shift, five of which were spent in surgery, Len's pretty sure he's going to sleep really, really well tonight. 

Fin


End file.
